Paras is a seasoned & passionate digital advertising professional. Currently, Paras is the Business Head at Matterkind, India and is also leading the Data Driven Programmatic practice for IPG, India since 2019. Paras continues to deliver great results for his clients via Addressable Programmatic solutions using the right mix of audience, talent and innovation.
Board Member Category: Main Stage Speakers 2022
Piyush Pandey
He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Advertising Agencies Association of India in 2010, the Clio Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, the ‘Padma Shri’ (Indian National Civilian Award) in 2016 and the Lion of St Mark, alongwith his brother Prasoon Pandey, at Cannes in June 2018. His first book, Pandeymonium, is on his life and times in advertising.
Ogilvy India has been India’s No. 1 creative agency for over two decades and Piyush has been named as the Economic Times’ Most Influential Person fourteen years in a row. Ogilvy was the first advertising job that he got and that’s where he continues to be.
Read more about his book “Open House” here – https://penguin.co.in/book/open-house-with-piyush-pandey/
Srishti Jha
Srishti Jha is an English journalist and writer. She has worked in the media for the past ten years with publications like Hindustan Times, India Today among others in both print and digital domains. She has extensively covered features, art, culture, fashion, languages, books and human narratives. She is currently working on her first novel as well as a screenplay. She lives in Bombay.
Pranjal Desai
Pranjal leads MediaMath’s India business as the Country Manager for India. Pranjal brings a wealth of regional expertise to Mediamath including a combination of business acumen, technical knowledge, and far-reaching industry experience across digital, marketing and ad-tech. Pranjal is overseeing MediaMath’s growth across India and is ensuring the demands of its clients and partners are satisfactorily met.
Usha Uthup
Saurabh Khattar
In his current role, he will be building strong partnerships with clients, agencies, and publishers and helping them solve their pressing business challenges with the use of cutting-edge IAS technology solutions. He’s leading IAS’s India expansion efforts as part of a larger global initiative taking place within IAS.
Saurabh brings 9+ years of experience in business development, sales strategies, closing deals and creating market strategies and programs to scale businesses, Previously Saurabh was working with Taboola as Director Sales & Media Partnerships and has supported leading brands & agencies/ fortune 500 companies with digital advertising and content strategies in India & APAC region.
Dr. RS Sharma
Dr Ram Sewak Sharma is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Authority (under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare) that implements Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), two flagship health missions of the Government of India. He is also the Chairman of Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 and a member of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19.
Dr Sharma is a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS 1978 (Rtd.) Jharkhand cadre). Before his appointment as the CEO of National Health Authority from February 1, 2021, he served as the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from August 2015 to September 2020. Prior to this assignment, he served as the Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India) and as the Chief Secretary to the State Government of Jharkhand (India).
Dr Sharma was founding Director General and Mission Director of UIDAI and was a part of leadership team that built and launched Aadhaar, the world’s largest Digital Identity Platform. He has captured the experience of building Aadhaar in his recently published book, ‘Making of Aadhar: World’s largest Identity Platform’.
Dr Sharma has a deep interest on using technology for governance and has led a number of e-Governance projects at both the National and the State level. He has been responsible for implementing a number of projects relating to ICT infrastructure, process reengineering and service delivery through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) models.His contributions in this area have been recognized both in India and abroad.
Dr Sharma is an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), where he earned a Master’s in Mathematics, and of the University of Allahabad, where he completed his Bachelor’s in Science. While on leave from the Government of India, he earned a Master’s in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside in 2002, and subsequently a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D).
Mitch Waters
As SVP of SouthEast Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand, Mitch manages all aspects of the company’s strategy, operations and people management in the region, based out of Singapore. He brings comprehensive experience across sales, strategy and innovation in the media and advertising industries to this role.
Mitch has been a high profile advocate of programmatic advertising and industry transformation, particularly in Australia. He is a regular commentator with AdNews, The Drum, and other media.
He was promoted to SVP, having previously led The Trade Desk in Australia and New Zealand, where he drove significant advances in revenue and market share. Mitch was also at the forefront of The Trade Desk’s efforts to drive collaborative innovation with advertising agencies through APIs.
Prior to The Trade Desk, Mitch led AOL International in Australia, where he launched the group’s platforms on the local market. He also held senior sales roles within various digital divisions of News Corp in Australia.
In addition to his role at The Trade Desk, Mitch sits on a number of high-profile industry councils, including the IAB Australia Video Council and IAB Australia Executive Technology Council. He also volunteers his time to mentor the next generation of media executives.
Mitch graduated from Macquarie University with a Bachelor degree in Commerce and Economics.
Gulshan Verma
Gulshan Verma is a digital technology and media executive with over 20 years of experience building fast growing organizations across the USA, UK, APAC and India.
Currently Gulshan leads JioAds – the advertising arm of Jio Platforms Limited which reaches more than 450M users.
Prior to JioAds, Gulshan was the Head of Advertising and part of the management team at Disney+Hotstar, India’s largest streaming platform where he grew the platform’s revenues more than 8x over three years. He has held other leadership positions in Times Internet Limited, Outbrain, Komli Media, Yahoo!, Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Co and IMG.
Gulshan holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, MSc. Political Economy of Transition in Europe and a BSc. Economics from the London School of Economics.
Prasad Sanagavarapu
Prasad is a business leader and technologist with a career spanning over two decades in the fields of content distribution, advertising, security, and media appliances. Currently as Chief Business Officer at Invidi, his role includes driving Cross Platform Content monetization through Advanced Advertising at various Distributors and Content Programmers with Invidi Product Line. In his previous roles, Prasad provided strategy consulting to various PayTV operators across APAC and Africa, with a particular focus on cross screen monetization.
Prasad has successfully built and exited multiple startups. His recent experiences include as a Co-Founder/CEO for Kiora – a content distribution platform for low-bandwidth domains which pioneered a patented secure micro cloud architecture.
Prior to this, Prasad held various senior engineering and business leadership roles at Motorola, Intertrust and Sun Microsystems. Prasad has also co-founded WebSprocket, which did initial technology contributions to the first definitions of a SDN (software defined network). He holds patents in Targeting, Ad Delivery and Data Monetization.
He received a Masters Degree in Computer Science and Automation from Indian Institute of Science, an MBA from California State, and is also an INSEAD alumni.
